IARU HF World Championship 2013

I wanted to „feel“ this contest, I had never run IARU as SO. I decided to spent as long time in pileup as it will possible, no care about number of mults.

Contest started with „only EU“ conditions, there were only few JAs and NA STNs. 10m and 15m slept, so 20m was major band. I tried to rotate to various directions, but the only one the best was directly to north. Here I was surprised with JAs, NAs, EUs and, of course, Alaska stations. All through the North!

Different conditions also on 40m and 80m. Only few DXs, but high amount of EUs, enough for nice pileups the whole night. Most productive hours were during the night…. Especially 40m was nice gift after high bands disappointment.

Fortunately Sunday morning starts with 10m opening, unfortunately only to zone 29, so thanks to zone 29 guys for high activity, hi. All high bands were better than on Saturday.

During the contest I didn’t care of mults. At the end of the contest I saw, that I’m able to beat 1 milion, so at the end of the contest I found a lot of missing HQs. After beating of 1 milion I was rewarded with nice 15m SSB pileup during last 30 minutes of the contest.

I found one major problem of my „QRM less“ rural QTH – suspiciously often S8 QRM from direction of 310 degrees. I have to take accumulator, IC-706 MKII and antenna and walk around to find the source, probably high-voltage line fault…

Thanks to all participant!

Final score:   1 015 092
Category:      SO AB HP
Rank:          WW #22    EU #7    OM #1

Call: OM7RU
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU

Class: SO Mixed HP
QTH: Dolna Micina
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Location : Northern Europe

Summary:

Band   CW Qs   Ph Qs   Zones  HQ Mults
-----------------------------------------------------------
160:     37      10      5      19
80:     166      54      8      26
40:     239     117     22      26
20:     401     153     28      34
15:     119      86     20      24
10:     104      43      8      22
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total: 1066     463     91     151    Total Score 1,040,842

Used equipments:
Yaesu FT-1000MP MarkV Field
ACOM 2000A (1,5 kW OUT)
MicroHAM microKeyer, MicroHAM StationMaster
WinTest

Antennas:
160m: Vertical (35m tower + 2 elevated radials)
80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 rotary dipole @34m
40m: InvVee @21m
20, 15, 10m: Cushcraft A4S 3 el. tribander @31m

73!
Riki, OM7RU